How I Became a Travel Writer Without Meaning To

Last Updated on April 7, 2025 by Candice Landau

I never intended to become a travel writer, to fly to countries all over the world in search of the perfect metaphor to describe a turquoise bay, or the taste of the air before an impending tropical storm in Micronesia.

Vegetation dense as a head of tight curls covers every inch of the hills that rise above Cane Bay. Photo credit: Candice Landau, British Virgin Islands 2022.

Rather, I had my heart set on becoming a fiction writer. I plotted and wrote all through high school. I pivoted from a Computer Science degree to an English Literature degree, and then I pursued a Masters in Creative Writing in one of the most romantic-to-writers of all cities: Bath, England.

I never spent an evening reading Bill Bryson over Garth Nix, or Paul Theroux over Orson Scott Card. No, my head was firmly stuck in worlds that didn’t exist and in magic systems that worked to make the impossible possible.

It was only when I learned to scuba dive in Oregon in 2016 that I became truly intrigued by a writer’s ability to capture and convey a place they’d been, a site they’d dived, a wildlife encounter they’d experienced. The underwater world had, in some way, become my new escape, a place filled with creatures I’d never before imagined, and marine life interactions I couldn’t have fathomed having. It was it’s own magical fantasy land and I the questing heroine, though of course, I was never quite sure what I was on a quest to discover…

Being in the midst of a group of other passionate and sensitive writing souls can’t be beaten.

Visiting my parents one day in 2017 I attempted to describe the world below the surface and what it felt like to dive.

“You should start a blog,” my mother said. “Start writing about these things, and what you’re feeling while they’re still fresh.”

My first publication in a print magazine. Photo credit: Candice Landau

And so, suggestible as an easily distracted child, I did just that. Scuba Scribbles was born. Some of my earliest articles on the blog attempted to convey the very things I’d waxed lyrical about—awe at the physical sensation of diving, the wonder I experienced interacting with wildlife, the joy of training to become better.

I had no goal to monetize the site, or to use it as a career pivot. I did not think of putting advertising on it. It was a place I took myself when I couldn’t dive, to re-experience some of those early awakenings.

Slowly I expanded what I wrote about. I began writing about dive gear. I began writing about how to dive various sites. I pitched organizations in the dive industry and got my first dive and nature-writing assignments—PADI, TDI, Wild Hope magazine, Scuba Diver Life, Dive Right In Scuba, Wetsuit Warehouse.

Now, for the first time, I was hungry to write about the natural world and my diving experiences rather than a world filled with dark creatures of my own invention.

When I began working for acclaimed nature writer Barry Lopez in 2018, I learned that that nature writing and good narrative travel writing could have as much allure as the novels I loved, though of course an avid reader of literary fiction, I already suspected as much.

I expanded my bookshelf on Barry’s recommendations. I read Kurt Caswell and Robert MacFarlane, Anna Badkhen and Caroline Van Hemert. I ached over these writers ability to describe nature, to describe their inner life within and because of nature. Slowly, I found my the domain of nature writer that spoke to me. They were similar but different. Sy Montgomery and Carl Safina. Elisabeth Tova Bailey and Peter Godfrey-Smith. These writers saw the world in a way others did not. They awakened me. They made me look at the animals around me in a different light. I saw intelligence and consciousness where I previously had not. I changed how I interacted with this world. They made me feel as though my vision were being restored after years of blindness and I ached too over the thought that others still existed in a capitalist script that wrote animals in only as a resource, as part of a life cycle, as something that could be counted, controlled and categorized. Invasive species or native? Food or companion animal?

The small writing shed Barry and I worked in in Blue River, Oregon later burned down in the terrible Holiday Farm fire in 2020. Photo credit: Candice Landau

Though much of my time with Barry was focused on administrative activities like managing his inbox and updating his website, the many days and weeks I spent transcribing emails and essays from his personal journals, or fact checking references in “Horizon,” gave me a window into the soul of a man who was not only deeply pensive but also incredibly sensitive to the world as well as to his own inner life.

Every so often as Barry read his work aloud to me and I typed it up, he’d stop. He’d look at me but also through me, as though he were seeing into another universe. He’d ask a question that encouraged a thoughtful response. What do you think about the journey a diver goes through as they mature? What does home mean to you now?

I’d curl in on myself like a wood louse and wonder who was I to take Barry’s minutes for myself. Did my opinion matter here? Barry, of course, had a way of making you feel it did. He was present, always, even in the early morning depths of cancer-induced pain, frustrated by having to slow down to stay still, to finish one project when he’d already moved mentally on to the next.

Often as we sat together, he’d ponder the weather. It wasn’t idle chatter. It was worry. The season had been dry and the risk of wildfire hung over the McKenzie river, as ominous as a sky thick with blackening cloud. It was as though Barry could feel the end. The end of the illusion—the cancer could be controlled, the fires wouldn’t come. But, come they did, a short year after I stopped working with Barry. His writing shed—where we worked—was gone. The beautiful river drive I’d enjoyed, also gone. And then, months later, on Christmas Day 2020, I learned Barry had died. It was on NPR. I cried for hours. I knew in the depths of my heart that the fires had ended it, not the cancer. It was hope that had died first. Barry’s whole life had become the home ground he lived on. The river he loved and learned from. So tied was he to the landscape that when it went, it tugged him with too.

I learned many things from Barry—about nature, about being human in nature, and about writing—but there are three things that stuck with me.

Firstly, that where you live can be as varied and changing as the myriad places you visit. You don’t need to travel across the world to be exposed to something fresh and different every day. If you never venture beyond your backyard—past the river flowing by—you can still learn from that river all there is to learn about it, about yourself, about others, about life.

Secondly, that sensitivity and empathy are not the negative personality traits many consider them but rather, are tools a writer should cultivate in order to experience and then convey the world in a way others cannot. It is hard to cultivate sensitivity in a world that attempts to squash it out of you. Sensitivity is not valued in corporate settings. It isn’t valued in congressional halls. It isn’t valued in courts of law. But, without it I’m not sure we can change, or that we can save what truly matters on this earth. Artists are the true torchbearers of sensitivity and of empathy. They’re the ones who need to ensure the fire stays burning, even if sometimes the light is so low it feels it will peel to smoke at the slightest breeze.

Finally, from Barry, I learned that stories are everything. The story you tell yourself about who you are is fundamental to the way you interact with the world. The story you tell about the place you visit can transform or illuminate. That stories are sometimes more important or necessary than food to a person. Barry wrote about this in “Crow and Weasel” but he also told me he’d rewritten his own personal story with the help of a therapist. It had taken years but together they’d lain out everything that happened to him over the course of his life, and edited the story he told himself. This gave him a level of acceptance and closure that time alone had not.

In 2022, when my heart, aching for sensitivity and craft, led me to seek work in an industry that was not software marketing, I applied for a job at Scuba Diving magazine. I was plunged head-first into the world of writing for magazines, one I’d had a taste of, but was not by any means and expert on.

Desperate to try my hand at writing about travel and diving, and of course eager to do the travel, I pressed my imposter syndrome to the side and dove head first into taking travel assignments and writing feature-length stories. While no book could teach me how to do it well, I learned what I could by reading. The more I read the more varied I realized dive travel writing, and thus, travel writing, could be.

Unfortunately, I missed something that I’m only beginning to realize today. Nature writing is at the very heart of writing about diving. I had become so lost in calling it travel writing that I’d compressed the nature of it into mere paragraphs, though it likely, was what all divers hungered to hear about.

As I learned to write features, I discovered that even they were varied. Some writers had a personal blog-like style, others took joy in focusing on history or in spinning more literary prose onto the pages. I soon came to realize that so long as the magazine’s tone of voice and brand vision were adhered to, many styles had their place and were suitable depending on the goal.

More important than style was that the writer translate their experience into words than made the reader feel they too were present. The very soul, strangeness, pulse, people and creatures of the destination should be brought to life through the medium of story. That, above all else, was what mattered. That was both power and the escape readers longed for.

In my article about diving Chuuk Lagoon, I realized that a strong character arc (if just for myself) made my story stronger. Photo credit: Candice Landau

Over time I realized many things about travel writing: It can be hard to find the time to do the actual writing if you’re always traveling; places and stories start to blend together if you aren’t taking copious notes; pictures are a great way to jog your memory when it’s time to circle back and write; AI can and will over time make your natural writing worse; and of course, you’re on your own path—stop comparing yourself to others!

I decided to create my own notebooks to help me capture these things as I experienced them. I wanted my stories to be honest and real. I wanted the details I’d later forget. First, I created a travel planner to cover both diving and non-diving, then I created a dive planner to do the same but for the world below. Finally I created a dive log.

I had learned that travel writing was also about remembering. And, the best way to remember was to capture the moments as they happen. Today, these notebooks go with me whenever I travel. Though I do sell them on Amazon, they were created purely for my own purposes.

In truth, travel writing is many things.

It is descriptive. It uses vivid sensory details to paint a picture of a place, from the crunch of gravel in an elegant French vineyard to the scent of cardamom wafting through a Sri Lankan market. If you are to write well in this space, you need to cultivate your ability to describe the world around you in an interesting but not jarring manner. Carry a notebook with you everywhere you go and get into the habit of using all five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing.

>> Related Reading: Why You Should Keep a Travel Journal

Travel writing is also reflective. It goes beyond the logistics of getting to a place, or of how you explored it. It is not a Fodor’s travel guide. Rather it is how a place made you feel, what it made you realize, or how it changed you. In addition to carrying a sensory notebook with you every day, I also encourage you to start a journal or a blog. Start making a habit of reflecting and of writing your reflections through. Often, I find the only way I know what I think is if I write it through.

Finally, good travel writing is story-driven. The best of it has characters, tension and arc—even if it’s just a story about finding a train station before midnight. Before you start, consider your character (often you) and what’s at stake. Consider your growth as you move through the piece.

Me writing the letter from the editor for Scuba Diving magazine on the plane and on the way to a dive travel assignment.

As I mentioned previously, travel writing comes in many forms. There is the narrative essay—a personal story with a beginning, middle and end. There is the destination guide—a helpful and practical overview of a place that mixes logistics with personality. There is the travel memoir—a full-length book that explores your journey through a personal lens. Think “Eat, Pray, Love”. There is the blog post—a mix (like this one) of information and storytelling. It’s often more casual and informal. There aren’t really any rules when it comes to blog posts. There is also more service oriented travel writing. You’ll find this on magazine websites or in marketing materials. Things like, “10 Best Shore Dives in the Pacific Northwest,” or “How to Pack for a Liveaboard.”

Remember, whatever your motivation—be it to build a career, to remember the journeys you’ve taken, or to become a well-paid influencer—at its core, travel writing is about connection. It’s about the connection between you and the world, and between you and your reader. It can make faraway places feel familiar and familiar places feel brand-new.

My version of travel writing more often than not relates to the underwater world. It’s filled with tidbits about the gear I’ve packed, about my feelings as I see a place with new eyes for the first time, and about marine life encounters. But, the same principles apply whether I’m writing about topside adventures or my life below. I’m trying to tell a story that shows you the place through my eyes and feelings, not just my words. I’m trying to bring you with, to immerse you. Perhaps even to change the way you think about something.

If you’re curious about writing your own stories, stay tuned. I’ll be sharing tips, prompts, and behind-the-scenes looks at how I shape travel experiences into publishable pieces. If you’d like to work with me, head here.